Friday, 18 December 2015

Google Says It Has Proved Its Controversial Quantum Computer Really Works

Google has informed that it has proof of a controversial machine bought in 2013, can use quantum physics to work through a kind of math which is critical to artificial intelligence and much quicker than a conventional computer. Governments together with leading computing companies like Microsoft, Google and IBM are putting in efforts in the creation of quantum computers due to which the improbability of quantum mechanics in representing data could unlock huge data crunching powers.

Computing giants are of the opinion that quantum computers can make their artificial intelligence software more commanding, unlocking scientific leaps in the field of materials science.

NASA is expecting that quantum computers could be helpful in scheduling rocket launches and feign future missions as well as spacecraft. Rupak Biswas, director of exploration technology at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in Mountain View, California has commented that `it seems a disruptive technology which could change how we do everything. At media briefing at the research centre, Biswas had commented, regarding the agency’s work with Google on a machine which the company had bought in 2013 from Canadian start-up D-wave systems that it is the world’s first commercial quantum computer.

Superconducting Chip –Quantum Annealer

The computer has been installed at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in Mountain View, California, operating on data utilising superconducting chip known as a quantum annealer. Quantum computer is hard coded with system fitted to what is known as optimization problems that are common on machine learning and artificial intelligence software.

But in the case of D-Wave’s chips it seems to be controversial among quantum physicists and researchers in and out of the company have not been capable of proving that the devices could tap into quantum physics in competing with conventional computers. The leader of Google’s Quantum AI Lab in Los Angeles, Hartmut Neven, had stated recently that his researchers had delivered some firm proof of that.

They had set up a series of races between the D-Wave computers that was installed at NASA against a conventional computer with a single process. He commented that `for a specific carefully crafted proof-of-concept problem, they had achieved a 100 million-fold speed-up.

Bug in D-Wave Design

A research paper describing the results online had been recently posted by Google though it has not been formally peer-reviewed. Neven had stated that the journal publication would be coming up soon. The results of Google were striking though if they were verified, would only represent fractional evidence for D-Wave.

The computer which had lost in the contest with the quantum machine had been running a code that solved the problem at hand utilising a system to the one that was in the D-Wave chip. A substitute system is known which could have enabled the conventional compute to be more competitive or win by exploiting what Neven has called a `bug’ in D-Wave design.

Neven had stated that the test which his group had staged tends to be still important since that shortcut would not be available to the regular computers when they tend to compete with the future quantum annealers with the potential of working on larger amounts of data.

A physics professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Matthias Trover had said that making that to come true could be crucial if chips like D-Wave are to be useful. It would be essential to explore if there are issues where quantum annealing has advantage over the best classical systems and to identify if there are classes of application problems, where these advantages could be realized.